Canadian-led offensive may
have killed 1,500 Taliban fighters

Last Updated: Wednesday,
September 20, 2006 | 1:07 PM ET

CBC News

The U.S. general who
heads all NATO military
forces says a two-week
campaign that cost five
Canadian lives in southern
Afghanistan may have
wiped out half of the
"hard-core" Taliban
fighters in the country.

The Taliban "suffered
a tactical defeat in
the area where they
chose to stand and fight"
and got "a very powerful
message … that they
have no chance of winning
militarily," he told
reporters at the Pentagon.

NATO estimates that
"somewhere in the neighbourhood
of around 1,000" Taliban
fighters were killed,
and the number could
be higher, he said.
"If you said 1,500 it
wouldn't surprise me."

Half of Taliban
force may be dead

He said he thought
there were 3,000 to
4,000 regular Taliban
fighters before Operation
Medusa. In response
to a question, he agreed
that he was saying that
one-third to one-half
of them may have been
killed.

Most of the combat
units in Canada's Afghanistan
contingent took part
in the operation. Four
Canadians were killed
in the fighting and
one died when U.S. jets
mistakenly strafed Canadian
troops.

On Monday, four more
Canadians died in an
attack by a suicide
bomber on a bicycle.
They were on patrol
in the Panjwaii district
of Kandahar province,
where the Taliban had
ostensibly been defeated
the previous week. The
bombing brought Canada's
death toll in Afghanistan
since 2002 to 36 soldiers
and one diplomat.

Canada currently
has more than 2,000
soldiers in Afghanistan.

Jones said it is
unclear how quickly
the Taliban dead will
be replaced with fresh
fighters. He stressed
that he was not counting
casual, short-term recruits.
"They bring along a
lot of other weekend
warriors if they can
pay for them. [They]
say, 'Do you want to
make 200 euros or $200?'
Actually, they pay dollars."

Nor are Taliban forces
the only problem, he
added.

"There's also the
al-Qaeda remnant, which
is considerably less.
Then there's the [opium]
cartels with their own
armies for security
of their convoys, and
this is a problem. Then
you have the corruption,
the criminal elements,
the tribal fighting
that goes on. So it's
a lot of disparate groups."

High praise
for Canada

He praised the countries
that contributed troops
to Operation Medusa.

"I think the governments
have been very strong,
particularly Canada.
Canadian leadership
has been very, very
strong in this. Canadian
forces did an absolutely
superb job, augmented
by their British colleagues,
a Dutch company that
came in and two companies
from the U.S."

But he said he was
not claiming total victory
over the Taliban. "We
have disturbed the hornets'
nest and the hornets
are swarming.… It remains
to be seen how much
more capacity they have
for this kind of fight."